Discover how to manually assign callouts to drafting views in Revit, whether you've imported CAD details or drawn from scratch. Learn how to create callout symbols, assign them to the appropriate drafting view, create a section detail callout, and add a section callout using the detail type.
Key Insights
- The process of manually assigning callouts to drafting views in Revit requires creating callout symbols and assigning them to the correct drafting view. This is done by checking the 'reference other view' box in the options bar before drawing the callout or section.
- Creating a section detail callout involves creating a detail sheet and placing the detail on that sheet. In the VDCI example, the sheet is a D 34 by 22 VDCI CAD teacher colon E1 30 by 42 horizontal.
- To make a section callout using the detail type, go to the view tab in the ribbon, select the section, and change its type from wall section to detail. Most importantly, the 'reference other view' box must be checked before drawing the detail callout.
Note: These materials offer prospective students a preview of how our classes are structured. Students enrolled in this course will receive access to the full set of materials, including video lectures, project-based assignments, and instructor feedback.
In this video, we're going to look at manually assigning callouts to drafting views. If you've imported CAD details or have drawn details from scratch in Revit using only detail components and lines, meaning there's no reference to the building model, you can create callout symbols and manually assign them to the appropriate drafting view. To do so is simple: just check the Reference Other View box in the options bar before drawing the callout or section.
Let's create a section detail callout in the reflected ceiling plan. First, we will create a detail sheet and place our detail on that sheet. Go to the View tab in the ribbon and, under the Sheet Composition panel, select Sheet and select D 34 × 22 VDCI CAD Teacher: E1 30 × 42 Horizontal.
Click OK, and let's go ahead and renumber and name it. You'll notice it simply took the next sequence in the series of sheets that were in our project so far, so by default it numbered it A 6.3. Let's go ahead and right-click it, click Rename, and we'll number this one A 7.1 and call it DETAILS (all caps). Click OK. Let's go ahead and select our title block here in this view, and one of the parameters for this family is Keynotes under the Graphics heading.
Let's uncheck that, and what you'll notice is that it removes the line which identifies where to place Keynotes on other sheets in this project such as plans or sections. Now, let's drag a view onto our sheet. We're going to take the ceiling soffit detail view that we just imported. It is under Drafting Views as Ceiling Soffit Detail. Just drag and drop it onto our sheet, and let's place it at the upper-right-hand corner of our sheet. Now, we want to detail on our reflected ceiling plan, so let's go to our Project Browser and find Reflected Ceiling Plans.
Let me just close all of these. It will be under Ceiling Plans. Let's expand that, and we are going to add it to Level 1.
Learn Revit
- Nationally accredited
- Create your own portfolio
- Free student software
- Learn at your convenience
- Authorized Autodesk training center
Double-click that, and it takes us to our ceiling plan view. What we're going to do is add a section callout, and use the detail type. So let's go to our View tab again in the ribbon, select Section, and be sure to change its type from Wall Section to Detail. This is the most important step of this video: be sure Reference Other View is checked before you draw your detail callout. What this will do is allow you to select views from this drop-down menu and pick another view to reference. We are going to select Ceiling Soffit Detail, the one that we just placed on sheet A7.1, and you'll notice the reference label appears to the right of the view name.
Select that, and now with that assigned, let's go ahead and draw a callout at the transition between a gypsum board ceiling and acoustical ceiling tile. We get this warning, which is pretty common when you work on a Revit project, saying "None of the created elements are visible in Reflected Ceiling Plan: Level 1 view." It suggests you should probably check your active view's parameter visibility settings as well as plan regions. Our sections aren't shown in this view, so let's go to Visibility Settings by typing VV as the shortcut. If we go to the Annotation Categories tab, let's scroll down and find Sections, and notice the box is unchecked, meaning all section tags are hidden in this view.
Click OK, and you will see that our sections appear. Let's hide some of these section tags and leave some others visible. If we select one of our building section tags, right-click it, select Hide in View, and rather than selecting Category, select Element so that only that one element is hidden and the rest of the elements in that category remain visible. Let's do the same for another one: Hide in View > Element. Now our building sections have been hidden.
You can go ahead and leave that wall section tag on, as it's not really conflicting with anything. Let's adjust this so that our tail is on one end, and the head is on the acoustical ceiling tile end. You'll notice the "SIM" text at the top right. This comes from the Type Properties of our drafting view detail callout. If we select that and click Edit Type under Properties, you'll notice there is a parameter called Reference Label, and the value right now is "SIM." If we delete that text and click OK, the "SIM" text is removed as well.
Sometimes, in our details, we create one type labeled "SIM" for similar, and then a blank one. You can create different types by duplicating them. For example, you can make one called "SIM" with a Reference Label set to "SIM, " or one for typical ("TYP"), changing the Reference Label to "TYP" and clicking OK. This way, whenever you drop in your callout tags, you have a few options to choose from, whether it be "SIM" or maybe your default is just blank. In the next video, we're going to take a look at creating detail components from a manufacturer's detail.